Weather Report: Tom Skilling 7-Day Forecast WGN-TV Weather Center.

A child's delight--Snow cover during the last week of December

December 31, 2004|By Tom Skilling

Over the decades, area children often measure the success or failure of a Chicago winter by accumulated snow cover during the holiday week between Christmas and New Year when schools are closed. By those standards, 2004 will go down as a failure, with only a trace of snow. Since 1950, over 70 percent of the years (39 of 55 years) have measured a trace or less of snow cover. Children growing up in the 1990s will remember those holidays as the "snowless" years. Snow cover was calculated by averaging daily snow cover reports for each week.

Sources: NWS archives, Midwest Climate Center

WGN-TV/Dennis Haller, Thomas Valle

----------

Tom Skilling is chief meteorologist at WGN-TV. His forecasts can be seen Monday through Friday on WGN-TV News at noon and 9 p.m.